Background
The department and profession that plays one of the most important roles in any organization is the Human Resource Department because it deals with workers, their motivation, appraisal and strategic focus that determine the overall productivity and profitability of any institution.
Human resources departments are very crucial in linking an organization with its visions because it is indeed the workers and employees who define the application of respective organization policies. This paper explores human resources management in terms of its roles in job design, tasks involved, job redesign, training and development.
Methods of job design
Job enrichment
According to Kaiser and Fordinal (2010), job enrichment is a critical factor that increase work output and enhances performance. Of utmost importance in job enrichment is the provision of a few motivation factors which play a crucial role of making a job interesting, challenging and rewarding.
At individual and group levels, Kaiser and Fordinal argue that employees easily get motivated when they realize that their input is valuable to their organizations. Indeed, high performance becomes fun as decisions easily flow in a bottom-upward trend.
Through repetitive operation of their different activities, they gather critical experiences that assist them in making correct decisions at team level. This can be attained by maintaining a highly consultative model of operation where employees propose solutions and ideas to different issues.
Though the ideas and propositions often undergo critical adjustments and enrichments, Kazemi and Maral (2010) argue that employees have strong attachment to the ultimate decision that strongly reduces their resistance to them. A company should emphasize that its employees are indeed invaluable since this will further invoke a sense of identity with the company.
Job rotation
Job rotation has become an important component of job design since it plays a significant role of transferring a worker from a particular job to another with an aim of ensuring that the worker learns what other jobs involve.
This is a task which most companies carry out to determine and track the level of skills in a worker. This is a process whose result ends in establishing a particular posting for a worker.
Factors that limit job design
Maintaining a competitive edge at workplace is cited to be a major challenge for human resource managers because of related complexities. Kazemi and Maral. (2010) argue that employees are always subjected to external forces that draw away their commitment and reduce their productivity.
A good example is when labour unions in other areas of professions start asking for payment increases. Besides, current workplace requires employees to be carefully motivated to ensure that they are able to assume an upward mobility in the Maslow’s human needs hierarchy.
However, López-Sáez et al (2010) reflect that to make employees achieve this ascent is very difficult because a balance has to be reached between profitability and methods employed for motivation.
Most HR managers are generally hands tied on the extent they can go in motivating their employees because salaries and remunerations are largely determined by other parties. This threatens them greatly because share holders are always demanding greater returns while employees equally require adequate remunerations.
Job characteristics model of job redesign
Job redesign is an important tool of redesigning and re-engineering methods, contents and work of a staff. It seeks to re-identify tasks, processes and methods that can be used to improve employee quality.
Some of the components which job redesign employs include developing a flexible job design like work at home, compressed work week, job sharing, flexible working hours, increased employee responsibility and autonomy, job enlargement and job rotation.
Strategic framework for implementation of job design or redesign
One of the most important frameworks for implementation of job design or redesign is adhering to the PERSTICLE which focuses on political factors, economical issues, relationship matters in a workplace, social factors, and others like technology, infrastructure, education, legal issues and culture.
Another framework is the environmental framework which deals with distillation, attitude, knowledge, cooperation and vision.
Formal orientation system and informal orientation system
A systemic approach to effective orientation is a process conducted by a human resource manager and which has the elements of attention to information, behaviours and attitudes of new workers.
Formal orientation requires that proper preparations be conducted so as to provide new employees with orientation information, evaluation and follow up. On the other hand, while many managers prefer an informal orientation, Sally (2005) argues is normally conducted in a haphazard way. Its elements include a means-end shema and impartiality.
Difference between training and development
Training and development of human resources remain one of the most critical facets in any organizations management because they facilitate assimilation of new ideologies, trends and models that invoke greater creativity, innovation and ultimate sustainability.
Training is a term used to refer to the use of teachings to aid an individual or a group to acquire competencies, skills, and knowledge. Its aim in an organization is to assist workers to enhance their performance, capacity and capability.
On the other hand, development refers to growth of an organization, a business or an individual. The main difference is that development encompasses a wide range of elements both at personal and organizational level. Some of them include: personal development, product development, career development, business development and fundraising.
Training is specific to learning of individuals in an organization or a business in order to develop. Through continued training, employees remain highly creative and innovative in handling different clients and making crucial decisions when on duty
How to decreasing the blockage of training and increasing the transfer of training
Driving the need for continued improvement
Since organizations started moving away from the classic model of management, Sally (2005) argues that change and change management has become the only permanent thing.
Human resource managers point that every achievement, be it negative or positive, has some room for improvement. However, application of these changes is equally very difficult because it is largely seen to disapprove the previous systems. As a result, most changes often get massive resistances and changes objectives are rarely achieved.
Create a learning environment
One of the most emphasized aspects in any organization is the resulting implications of transfer of training and ensuring that more workers are trained. Sally (2005) brings out an advanced understanding of the role that organizational training and development play in knowledge management in an organization.
While seeking to establish the importance of training in an organization and the need to sustain the practice, Sally argues that creating a learning environment will facilitate assimilation and application of skills to improve profitability.
Enhance training and development
To concur with Sally’s (2005) view, training and development is perhaps the greatest way of sustaining learning and transfer of skills because it enables an organisation to develop particular skills in its staff. Training and development therefore acts like a link between a company’s current status and its target by empowering other workers with additional skills.
Through continued training, employees remain highly creative and innovative in handling different clients and making crucial decisions when on duty. As a result, continued skills development and training acquaints employees with skills that allow them to perfect services to consumers.
References
Kaiser, A. & Fordinal, B. (2010). Creating a ba for generating self-transcending knowledge. Journal of Knowledge Management, 14(6): 928-942.
Kazemi, M. & Maral, Z.A. (2010). Defining a knowledge management conceptual model by using MADM. Journal of Knowledge Management, 14 (6): 872-890.
López-Sáez, P., Navas-López, J.E., MartÃn-de-Castro, G. & Cruz-González, J. (2010). External knowledge acquisition processes in knowledge-intensive clusters. Journal of Knowledge Management 14(5): 690-707.
Sally, C. S. (2005). Human resource management in American counties (2002). Public Personnel Management, 34(1), 59-84.